In the misery of a Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland, Jack Lewin remembers, the books helped him survive. Reading the Yiddish words late into the night, Lewin could forget the hunger that sometimes brought him to tears. "I lived with the characters of the books," he says in his home near Wilshire Boulevard, his green-and-gray eyes distant with memory. Maybe it was those books that made it possible for him and the others to be human after Auschwitz. Now he traces his fingers over the faded spines of his collection and worries aloud: Will anyone read them a century from now?

Cameroon, located on the west coast of Africa between Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, is a nation of unparalleled beauty and biological diversity. Mt. Cameroon, in the west, is one of Africa's largest volcanoes, reaching 13,255 feet; in the north of the country, savanna and semi-desert extend to Lake Chad; and in the south, lush tropical rain forests form the northwestern boundary of the Congo basin. Similar in size to California, Cameroon is one of the most biodiverse countries in Africa, home to more than 900 species of birds and 300 species of mammals (including more than 29 primate species)

The city of Whittier and a conservation group have reached an agreement to allow a controversial oil-drilling project under a nature preserve, a proposal that immediately drew fire from opponents. Under the settlement, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a regional government entity dedicated to preserving open space and wildlife, is to receive up to $11.25 million a year from the city of Whittier's royalties from the oil. The authority will use the money to buy and preserve land elsewhere in the county.

The state is moving the route of a proposed tunnel system in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta away from north delta communities to a land preserve that is an important winter home for the greater sandhill crane and other migratory birds in the Pacific Flyway. The realignment, announced Thursday by the California Natural Resources Agency, is intended to lessen the project's effects on north delta residents who have complained fiercely about the proposal - in some instances refusing to let state survey crews on their property.

In a now-familiar routine in Washington, lawmakers walked right up to the brink of disaster Monday, only to pull back Tuesday. This time, though, the source of the drama was the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened to end the minority's ability to filibuster presidential nominees for executive branch posts. Reid relented Tuesday morning after Republicans agreed not to block votes on President Obama's nominees for secretary of Labor, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Researchers have unraveled the genetic code of a wild horse that loped across the frozen Yukon about 700,000 years ago, making it the oldest creature by far to reveal its DNA to modern science. Until recently, experts believed it was impossible to recover useful amounts of DNA from fossils that old. The previous record holder for oldest genome belonged to a polar bear that lived more than 110,000 years ago. The horse sequence, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, amounts to a dramatic increase in how far back scientists can peer into the biochemical history of advanced life.

The brick building sits on a scrubby lot in Rancho Cucamonga behind a barbed-wire and chain-link fence, its facade worn and its interior dilapidated to the point where city officials have been worried it is unsafe. The squat, two-story structure - known as the Chinatown House - looks like any other building that has fallen victim to time and neglect, but those fighting to save the house see it as a slice of a vanishing history: one of the last pieces in the Inland Empire of the Chinatowns that once proliferated in California.

The state Assembly voted Thursday to maintain a mandate that local governments provide public documents upon request, but some lawmakers criticized the move as embarrassing and political theater, arguing it is unlikely to be approved by the Senate. At the urging of Gov. Jerry Brown, the Assembly and Senate had previously approved legislation making local compliance with portions of the state Public Records Act optional so that the state would no longer be required to reimburse agencies for tens of millions of dollars in costs to comply.

Hard to imagine, but in the 1950s there were no more than a couple hundred surfers in Southern California. Spying one of these early adopters gliding across the waves was a rare treat. Rarer still were the people who photographed them. They captured the early legends of modern surfing before they became household names. And they caught the spirit of an emerging California beach culture that was soon to sweep across the nation. At the time, no one thought this was history in the making.

The Manhattan Project, the secret research mission to develop an atomic weapon ahead of Germany and bring an end to World War II, was one of the 20th century's most ambitious feats of science and engineering. And one of its darkest moments. In many respects, the Manhattan Project ushered in the modern era. The creation and use of these early weapons of mass destruction raised profound ethical questions, which remain just as challenging and urgent today as in 1945. As a nation, we have a responsibility to grapple openly and objectively with the Manhattan Project's complex legacy.